The film begins as a new boy (Rollo Skinner) and his parents move in next door to Dani (Evie Playfoot-Orme) and Louisa (Joanne Gale). The girls soon become obsessed with this boy despite only catching glimpses of his arms through the window.

The main crux of the plot is the “stalker-ish” nature of Louisa’s obsession with this new boy and we soon learn his name is Sam. The girls form a friendship with him, secretly swapping books via a secret postbox (aka: a bread bin in the garden).

The audience soon glean that there is perhaps something more sinister going on with Sam’s family and the woman running the café. I can’t say much more without going into spoiler territory but to be honest the plot is mostly ridiculous and overly convoluted for no particular reason.

The script is stiff. It seems as if the writer has gone for ‘naturalistic dialogue’, to make it seem as if we are watching ‘real life’ unfold, but what comes out sounds very forced and stilted. At one point the music stops dead and we have a close up on Sam’s face to exclaim: “You are the worst mother possible!” Hilarious, but not intending to be.

It may not be fair to blame the script entirely but it is hard to look past the wooden acting to find something redeemable within.

I had to stifle laughing at the film rather than with it several times. There is an extremely dated joke about the horse meat scandal (circa 2013), which goes to show just how long it takes to get some independent films from shooting to release. However, in the moment this comes across as silly and perhaps should have been removed in post.

The writer/director/cinematographer Christine Lalla is an adept photographer and for her minute budget of £6000 she has made a film that looks good with some interesting shot choices. It is therefore unfortunate that the film felt like such a drag.

The actors appear to have taken lessons at the Joey Tribbiani school of acting and I was half expecting to see the sinister one eyebrow raise to convey that “something evil” was about to happen. The overbearing and obvious score did that for us with the classic “duh duh daah!” instrumentation signaling that we should feel disturbed by what we are seeing.

This is the first film to have disappointed me at this year’s East End Film Festival, which otherwise has been first-rate. I’m sure this was just a minor snag and am hoping that I will continue to be impressed until the festival’s close on July 12th.

Niki Alexandrou
@nikialexandrou